The Pitfalls of Not Keeping Prices

Colin Gleadell reveals the irony of online art sales touting their evanescent results. The Auction Room has courted sales by promising not to keep a public record of works that have not sold in the hope that consignors will feel better about exposing their works to the risk of being burned. It would seem that the lack of price transparency boomeranged on The Auction Room when its site went down in the last half hour of bidding as a slew of interested parties crowded online to see the results before they vanished.

Let’s let Gleadell tell it:

For The Auction Room, things may have been exacerbated because followers of the Middle Eastern market had learnt from The Daily Telegraph that results would not be posted on its website or elsewhere, so they would have to visit The Auction Room to find out if lots sold. The closing action has duly been postponed until 6pm this evening , when, hopefully, the website will cope

Art market news: online sale of contemporary Middle Eastern art suffers website crash (Telegraph)